


Hearts of Fire Grow Cold

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-24
Updated: 2007-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>We made a promise we swore we'd always remember, no retreat no surrender.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts of Fire Grow Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/profile)[**inlovewithnight**](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/) who gave me a prompt of BSG and Springsteen's [Never Surrender](http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/NoSurrender.html). Title and summary from the same.
> 
> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works.

"Get away from me." He raised his hand at the man who should not be in his room. "I'm not one of you."

"I beg to differ, sir."

"And I beg to kick your ass all over this ship if you don't get away from me."

"Sir."

"Sir? I have rank in your little Cylon army?"

"You have rank in this Fleet, sir."

"Frak it, Chief, what do you want?" Tigh poured himself a drink and pushed the bottle across the small table toward Chief Tyrol. "I'm off duty, I'm tired, and my quarters are not the best place to discuss this."

"We're not…" The Chief bowed his head, shifted his eyes from side to side. "We're not in your quarters. You are, but I'm not. I'm in mine. We're projecting."

"Dreaming?"

"Sure."

"Then get the frak out of my head, Chief. Ain't no one allowed in here but me."

_"And me."_

"You," he said to his dead wife as she settled down on his lap, "aren't here."

_"Of course I am. What's yours is mine, isn't that right, Saul?"_

"No." Dream or no dream, he pounded back another drink. "What do you want, Chief?"

"Actually, sir, you called me here."

Ellen twined her arms around his neck and nuzzled his face, smooth skin brushing his rough cheek. _"And me."_

He ignored her and focused on Tyrol. "What is she?"

"Sir?"

"My wife, Chief, my damn wife sitting on my lap. What is she?"

"There's no one on your lap, Colonel."

"Then she's not real." He took another drink and laughed bitterly. "Of course she isn't. She's dead."

_"You killed me, Saul. But I forgive you."_

"I don't."

"Sir?"

"I'm fine, Chief. Not going to go crazy right in front of your eyes. Not any more than I already am."

"It would be understandable if you did." Tyrol shrugged his shoulders and picked up the drink he'd been offered earlier. "This is a hard thing to swallow."

"Hard? Hell, son, this is impossible." He pushed Ellen to the side and refilled both glasses. "Why aren't the others here?"

"I don't know."

_"You didn't invite them."_ Ellen squirmed on his lap. _"You never were much for parties, Saul."_

Invite them. That made sense. As much as anything made sense. He'd have no problem sharing a drink with the Chief and Starbuck's husband, but that woman of Roslin's, well, she wasn't welcome here.

_"You're going to need to rethink things, Saul. She's more yours than she is Roslin's now, isn't she?"_

"How?"

"I don't know. Same way you got me here."

_"Just want her."_ Ellen stroked her hand down his cheek, fingers rasping across the coarse hairs. _"You can't have forgotten how to want a woman, not so soon."_

"And that'll get Anders here?"

"And Tory, I think so."

"It's that easy," he mumbled. And it was, because there they were, Anders leaning against the wall in the corner and Tory sitting primly next to the Chief. Neither one of them looked surprised.

"Took you long enough," Tory snapped.

"Shut your mouth."

"Lovely," she said. "And this is our leader?"

"What makes you think I'm your leader?"

Ellen kissed his forehead. _"See how they look to you? That's darling."_

He poured yet another drink then offered the bottle to them, starting with Roslin's woman. Maybe a drink would settle her down.

_"Or spice her up,"_ Ellen said. _"Just the way you like them."_

His gaze wandered to Tory's legs, then up to her mouth. Cold bitch, sexy as frak, just exactly the way he's always liked them. But if he was stupid enough to go after another calculating woman he'd be sniffing around Roslin just like the Admiral was.

Tory declined the drink with a sniff, Tyrol passed, and Anders drank straight from the bottle, long gulps, the alcohol rippling his throat as it went down. "You're going to want to leave some for me, son," Saul said.

Anders let the bottle fall slack in his fingers, twirled it, and watched as it filled again. "Projecting," he slurred. "None of this is real. So I figure we can make anything we want out of it." He raised the bottle to his mouth again. "And I choose to make myself blind, stinking drunk."

_"He reminds me of you."_

"What is wrong with all of you?" Tory uncrossed and crossed her legs and straightened her skirt. "Do any of you realize the magnitude of this?"

"Why the frak do you think I'm drinking?" Anders took another swallow and gestured at her with the bottle. "You weren't this uptight when we were frakking, maybe you're the one who ought to be drinking."

_"Oh, yes, he's very like you."_ Ellen stood and draped her arms around Anders, running her fingers up and down his chest. _"Do you think you're the same model?"_

Tyrol cleared his throat. "Sir?"

"I tell you what, Chief, why don't you just run this little meeting here."

He nodded. "The way I see it, there has to be a reason for this. The music, the way we all heard it. There has to be a reason."

Anders kicked a chair out from the table and sat, propping his feet up in front of Tyrol. "Why?"

"Because we all heard it."

"So?"

Tory pushed his feet off the table and crossed her arms angrily over her chest. "Sober up, Sam."

"Lighten up, Tory. It isn't as if it's the end of the world or anything." He put his feet back up and crossed them at the ankles. "That was a few years ago. Now it's just the end of our lives."

Ellen moved away from Anders and returned to Saul. Her laugh tickled his ear as she spoke. _"You four are the worst excuse for Cylons I have ever seen."_

"Reason," he growled, taking the once-again full bottle from Anders and swigging from it. Ellen tried to take it from him and he avoided her grasping hands. "You think there's a reason, Chief?"

"Must be."

"Maybe it's your little half-Cylon baby," Anders said. "Maybe we were all supposed to make little half-Cylon babies." He looked from Saul to Tory then shrugged. "Or maybe not."

"Maybe it's our positions."

"Yours," Anders corrected. "Not mine. I'm nothing."

Tory cut in. "Your wife wasn't."

"And now she's dead, so I'm useless." He tilted his chair back. "Good to know. So can I get back to drinking?"

"Because that's helpful."

"Shut up."

"All of you shut up." Saul closed his eyes and when he opened them the glasses and alcohol were gone. He chuckled happily to himself.

_"Now you're getting the hang of it."_ Ellen licked his neck. _"What else can you do?"_

He shook his head and Ellen vanished from his lap. He looked furtively around the room, but she was nowhere to be found. Damn fine power, this projecting. "Chief," he said. "Go on."

"What does it matter?" Anders interrupted. "We're dead if anyone finds out."

Saul cleared his throat. "I said 'Chief,' Sam, so shut your mouth." Sam snorted as he eased back into his seat. Tory began to say something when Saul cut her off with a cough. "Chief."

"Right." Tyrol nodded then swallowed hard. "We fought them. The Cylons. And now we…"

"Are them," Tory finished. "Two drunks, an idealist, and me. We're hardly the pride of the Cylon army."

"Maybe that's it," Saul said, slowly rising to his feet. "We're more human than any of them. Hell, we're more human than some of the humans we serve with. Maybe that's the reason."

Sam tried to question him, as did Tory, but somewhere outside his projection his personal wake-up call was sounding. "Time to wake up," he said.

"Saul?"

"Admiral." He sat on the edge of his bunk and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "You really here, Bill?"

A smile creased the Admiral's face. "You fall asleep drinking?"

He wanted to say yes, but when he looked around the room there were no bottles. "No. I guess not. Rough night."

"For all of us." Bill sat in the chair so recently vacated by Sam Anders. Instead of putting his feet on the table he folded his hands in front of him and bowed his head. "This thing with La—the President. Chamalla. Cancer. Lying." He sighed. "Now people are saying she could be one of them."

"Them?"

"A Cylon. She isn't, of course, but they're saying she could be working with them."

"And you're not sure," Saul prompted. "You suspect her?"

"I don't know."

"No," Saul said, resting his hand on Bill's shoulder. "You never do, do you?"

Bill put his hand atop Saul's. "With you I do."

For a split second he thought he heard Ellen's laughter, but when he looked around no one was there.


End file.
